The present invention relates to a method for the maintenance of a plurality of processing stations of a textile machine, whereby at least one first maintenance unit can travel alongside the processing stations in order to service and/or control the processing stations.
In a known open-end spinning machine (DE 199 17 971 A1) a maintenance unit passes a plurality of spinning stations on one side of the open-end spinning machine and services the spinning station as needed. For this purpose, the maintenance unit patrols a row of spinning station along a guide rail. If the maintenance unit then encounters a spinning station that is signaling a defect, the maintenance unit attempts to put the spinning station back into operation. If this succeeds, the maintenance unit continues its travel in the original direction. If however the attempted maintenance fails several times, the affected spinning station is registered as not serviceable and the maintenance unit continues its travel and when it next passes the spinning station registered as non-serviceable that spinning station is no longer serviced by the maintenance unit. The spinning station's inability to be serviced is signaled to an operator so that he may carry out inspection tasks at the spinning station. In addition, a record is made if the maintenance unit is repeatedly unable to on several different spinning stations, it being then concluded that this is due to a malfunction of the maintenance unit. This malfunction is then also signaled and the inspection of the maintenance unit is carried out. By ignoring the spinning stations that cannot be serviced, the work efficiency of the maintenance unit is increased, since it no longer makes additional maintenance attempts at the non-serviceable spinning stations.